Next up on the Socialist to Liberty list: Sweden

by Clifford F. Thies

While we still await the formation of government in Australia, the next election in a major democracy is upon us, in Sweden. Sweden was formerly pretty much the poster child for democratic socialism. Not today.

With cradle to grave welfare programs, tax rates reaching up to 100 percent, and a totally secularized society, Sweden was the workers' paradise of the non-totalitarian left up until the 1990s. But, things weren't working so well. The devotion of Swedes to work and family life atrophied, and Swedish girls - whose natural beauty is world renown - turned asexual in increasing numbers. Perhaps the event that best memorialized the Swedish experiment with socialism was the departure of tennis great Bjorn Borg for the tax haven of Monaco.

Today, the tables are completely turned around. Sweden is, nowadays, a mixed economy, with the prospect of overtaking the United States in economic freedom as they continue to reform their economy and as we devolve into Argentine-like labor-socialism. Their budget deficit is merely 2 percent of GDP (as compared to an average of 7 percent elsewhere in the European Community and 11 percent in the U.S.). And, with a vibrant recovery from the global recession underway, the center-right government of the country is already planning for tax cuts. Little wonder that the four-party center-right coalition looks headed for re-election.

The latest polls indicate that the center-right parties, which were elected four years ago by a wafer-thin margin, will receive a realtively comfortable majority in the next parliament. Togather, they enjoy 48 percent in the polls, as compared to 45 percent for the left of center parties. The Swedish Democratic Party, a populist-right party along the lines of Geert Wilder's Freedom Party in the Netherlands, looks to qualify for the parliament, which requires at least 4 percent. If they do qualify, we might anticipate that they would either support the ruling center-right parties from the outside, as in Denmark and in the Netherlands, or become part of a five-party ruling coalition.

Dr. Thies is a professor of economics at the Univ. of Shenandoah in Virginia.